At Salesforce, equality is a core value and an important part of our culture. We are committed to creating a world where everyone has equal rights, equal access to education, equal opportunities to succeed and equal pay for equal work.

We’re proud of the action we've taken on equal pay. In 2015, Salesforce was one of the first companies to take a public stance on pay equality. We vowed to review employee compensation on an annual basis to ensure everyone is paid equally for equal work and close any gaps that existed. Since then, we’ve conducted two equal pay assessments and have spent $6 million to ensure equal pay for equal work. Last year, we expanded the scope of our assessment to evaluate salaries, as well as bonuses globally. We also looked at differences in pay for not only gender, but also race and ethnicity in the U.S.

This year, we again assessed the salaries and bonuses of our global workforce, grouping employees in comparable roles and analyzing compensation of those groups to determine whether there were unexplained differences in pay.

We found that 6 percent of our employees globally required adjustments. We spent $2.7 million to address the differences between gender, as well as race in the U.S.

The percentage of affected employees this year was cut nearly in half, down from 11 percent the prior year, despite Salesforce growing at 17 percent year-over-year. Our latest assessment shows that equal pay is a moving target, especially for growing companies in competitive industries.

As our CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff recently told 60 Minutes, “We're going to have to do this continuously. This is a constant cadence.”

Every time we conduct these assessments, we learn more about the numerous factors that contribute to pay inequality — including legacy industry practices, acquiring companies and external changes in the job market — all of which we are proactively working to address.

As we continue to grow rapidly — we plan to hire 8,000 employees next year — we're looking at ways to create a system that will standardize the process for setting salaries, so new hires will be brought to parity from day one. In addition, as we continue to acquire companies and create new roles, we’re refining our job codes and definitions to make sure everyone performing similar work is compensated fairly. It’s not enough to address equal pay annually — our ultimate goal is to close the equal pay gap altogether.

There is no finish line to equal pay, and we are more committed than ever to achieving pay equality inside our four walls, and outside as well. This is not something we can own by ourselves — industry action is crucial to achieve pay equality. We are proud members of the Employers for Pay Equity coalition, a signatory of the Paradigm for Parity pledge, and have also partnered with Lean In for the second year in a row.